The backlash against voting machines without a paper trial is underway as more are demanding the use of paper ballots across the country. The latest news on this front comes from local news station KCRA 3 and was written by Mark Albert:
President Donald Trump on Thursday broke from some of his fellow Republicans by calling for paper ballots to be used in all states, even as his party blocks efforts in Congress to approve more money to buy new voting equipment.
“Going to good ol’ fashioned paper in this modern age is the way to do it,” the president told reporters at the White House.
His remarks agree with those of election security experts, who have called for all states to go back to voting equipment that provides paper trails. Currently, 11 states have at least one precinct that use electronic machines for voting that keep no verified paper backup for voting: Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
See the full story here. Democracy Chronicles is against the continued use of voting machines without a paper trial. Such machines can have a negative impact in voter confidence in election outcomes and are widely recognized as a potential vulnerability from a security standpoint. This point was expertly outlined in a great explanatory page on the website of the nonprofit fair election advocacy group, the Verified Voting Foundation:
The most important aspect of a voting system, with respect to accuracy, integrity and security, is whether or not it is independently auditable. That is, the very prerequisite to accuracy, integrity and security in today’s voting technology is that there be a voter-marked paper ballot, or at least a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, for every vote cast. This ensures that election officials will have something they can use to confirm whether or not the electronic tallies produced by the voting system accurately reflected the intention of the voters.
Be sure to also check out the Democracy Chronicles Election Technology section and our articles on Technology Dissidents, the Internet and Democracy or Voting Machines.
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